


These Four Walls

by SilentAuror



Series: Intermezzo stories (TST-TLD) [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anger, Angst, F/M, M/M, POV: John, Thoughts of infidelity, spoilers for series 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 10:13:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9176470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentAuror/pseuds/SilentAuror
Summary: A little slice of John, mid-TST.





	

**These Four Walls**

 

Sleep. 

Wake. 

Work. 

Eat. 

Routine, routine, routine. That’s all there is, because that’s all there can be. Do the right thing. The baby is crying: pick her up. Change her. Play with her. Take her to M – (full stop)

Get on the bus. Tune out until work. See the patients. One at a time. Don’t stop, just keep moving. Don’t think. 

Don’t ask. There are no answers, at least not ones John wants to contemplate right now. Just keep cycling through the routine. A new day, a new shirt. Already folded, creases across his chest. He hasn’t thought of ironing. He has thought of – but no, he decided. Took him six months to do it, but he did it: made a decision. _So we’re going back, then, is that it? The consensus?_ He’d wrestled with it, with getting a solid answer from the other side of his brain. Don’t think about Sherlock, blinking blearily in the ambulance. _Sherlock. We’re losing you._ Don’t think about the sound of the heart monitor flatlining. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it, damn it! 

His fist slams down onto his desk, making the half cup of cold coffee jump in its mug. There, he’s gone and let himself start thinking again. That’s a problem. Mustn’t let that start again. He’s screwed himself up to the point and stuck to it, stood by his word. _Till death do we part_ , he said. Said it in front of a crowd of witnesses, their ignorance and his own irrelevant to the fact that he’d said it. Said it with Sherlock listening, too. _Till death do we part: your death or mine_. He hadn’t considered Sherlock’s as one of the possibilities. 

But that’s a dead end. Don’t think about it. It’s been a dead end since day one, since _So, you’ve got a boyfriend, then?_ Don’t think about it. A literal dead end, says the other part of John’s mind, musing. He died. We saw it happen. Sherlock, dead on the pavement, blood streaking over his pale face, pulse dead in his wrist. (Stop!!!!!!) 

John swivels his chair around and goes to lie down on the patient table. There was a cancellation and he shouldn’t have this break. Doesn’t want this break. He should call Tom, the assistant, in to replace the paper; it’s his job. Or John could just do it himself. He stares at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling and thinks about performing surgery on himself. A frontal lobotomy, wouldn’t that be nice. Then he wouldn’t ever think about anything again. Just hunting and sleeping and mating, he supposes. 

Mating. His thoughts go to Mary and he shudders. He can’t bring himself to be gentle, tender, slow. Not anymore. Not since he came back. She barely ever wants it now, anyway, and the last time they did, she said he was too rough. He didn’t even care at the time. Next his thoughts go to Sherlock, where they slam up against the same closed door for approximately the nine hundred millionth time and slither down to wilt into a forlorn heap at the base of the door. No joy there. Then, cautiously, to the mysterious smile of the girl from the bus. 

Curious, that. Flattering. A man his age, with baby-tired, wife-tired, life-tired eyes, still getting phone numbers on the bus. He sent one text: _Hey_. Just a hey. Nothing more. It’s innocent enough, an innocent enough bit of balm for his damaged ego. It’s innocent. 

He knows that it isn’t, no matter how often he tells himself the opposite, and asks himself how far he’s willing to let this game go. It’s just a game, isn’t it. A bit of petty revenge. _You shot him. And you, you chose her. Would have left me behind._ If nobody cares what he’s up to, then it would serve them both right if he struck out on his own. E. Whatever that stands for. The ceiling lights make three independent stripes, fluorescent tubes that run in parallel lines without touching. He wants to be in a parallel line from Mary. Maybe Sherlock, too. Because if he’s so replaceable, maybe he ought to do the same by way of return and replace them both with someone else. 

It’s not even about that. It’s all of it, he thinks, staring at the lights until the images are imprinted on his retinas even when he blinks. He closes his eyes and feels himself drift in helpless, hopeless despair. He doesn’t love Mary. And lately he’s spent so much time feeling furious with Sherlock that he doesn’t even know what he wants there anymore. He’s never let himself hope, anyway, but he used to know. Vaguely, in the back of his mind. He knew once. He knew that sometimes (most of the time?) the anger came from wishing Sherlock had done something differently: reacted differently, behaved differently, responded – at all, sometimes. Instead he’s done everything John wishes he hadn’t: pushed him to go back to Mary, shot someone (for Mary) and got himself sent away. Been a dick about the whole godfather thing, ignoring the entire christening, being bizarrely facetious and flippant ever since he was released from the mission, never letting a single silence fall between them, never leaving any room for a real conversation to develop. Working frenetically and mostly ignoring him. 

(Is it a cover for something?) Once John might have guessed this, but now it occurs to him that maybe he doesn’t know Sherlock very well at all. And as much as he used to complain about the way Sherlock used to drive his former girlfriends away, now he resents Mary’s hold on him and Sherlock’s unusually reciprocal affection. Is it a game? Once he might have thought that Sherlock was only doing it to appease him – but now they’ve gone ahead and left him entirely out of the equation. 

The walls press in and he wants to scream. He can’t, though, can he? No one likes it when he loses his temper. No one even takes it seriously. Thinks what he’s angry about is worth his anger. _Two years… you let me grieve. How could you do that? But why is_ she _like that?_ They talk down to him like a dog, Mary amused by, Sherlock indifferent to his pain. So he’ll shut it in, then. Let it out in little slips of sarcasm and barely-disguised anger. _He’s an arsehole, easy mistake. Is it too early for a divorce?_ He wants to scream.

John hears himself sigh heavily. 

After work, he’ll have to go home to Rosie. God knows whether Mary will be home, or if she’ll have plans and leave him alone with their child again. She’s done that a lot lately. Although right now John prefers to be alone with the baby, sat in the darkening sitting room by himself, maybe finding it in himself for a rough, solitary wank on the sofa, his only (rather pathetic) escape from this present hell, before dragging himself back to tidying up or whatever Mary’s left for him to do. Better that than being jammed into the claustrophobic atmosphere of the flat with Mary, the consequences of his decision to let Sherlock push him back into its cage reverberating around his skull as the walls of the flat close in around him. 

(Don’t think about it.)

For a moment, John struggles with this, and defiantly gives in to the temptation to just that: think about what he so desperately wants rather than this drudgery. 

_– he and Sherlock walking back to Baker Street, hand-in-hand after a long dinner, snow falling gently around them. Stopping under a street lamp, Sherlock turning to him and looking down with intent in his eyes, snow caught in his dark curls, John stretching up to put his mouth to Sherlock’s in a long, warm press of lips, Sherlock’s arms coming around him in a warm sweep of wool. A slip of breath, touch of tongues. Breaking apart to murmur, laughing, John’s voice suggestive and Sherlock shivering in anticipation in his arms –_

But this is nothing more than fantasy, a sick fantasy that never had any basis in reality. Sherlock has never wanted that. He seemed perfectly content to pack John off into this toxic marriage, then back into it even after Mary did her best to kill him. It makes no sense, but John is certain that if he were to examine it too closely, it would prove to be his own fault somehow, anyway. He’s done trying to figure them out. Both of them: the wife he never should have married, and the man who refuses to love him. They deserve each other. 

There’s a knock at the door. John doesn’t bother moving. “Yeah?” 

Tom pushes the door open, then stops, seeing John lying on the table. “Oh – sorry Doctor Watson,” he says apologetically. “I just wondered if I should come and set up for your next one? She’s due in ten minutes. But if you’re not, er…”

He trails off and John spares him, not opening his eyes. “It’s fine, Tom. I’ll make up the table myself.” 

Tom hesitates. “Sir, are you all – ”

“I’m fine,” John says sharply. “Close the door, please.” 

Tom withdraws immediately, the door closing firmly behind him. 

Within his chest, four walls loom in around it all, closing in and squashing it into something black and dense and impenetrable. 

John opens his eyes and wants to scream. 

He doesn’t. 

*


End file.
